


Ivo's Book of Hours

by baranduin



Series: No Night Is Too Long [3]
Category: No Night is Too Long (2002)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-14
Updated: 2010-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-06 06:27:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baranduin/pseuds/baranduin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Book verse. When did Ivo notice Tim and what effect did it have?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ivo's Book of Hours

**Author's Note:**

> Written for fanfic100 community challenge #006--Hours.

Ivo always lived a carefully-regulated life in which each hour of the day and night was planned and accounted for before it was allowed to unfold. Even as a child, he had been the master of his thoughts and activities; he had been the lord and master of his and Isabel's enchanted yet extremely logical kingdom. This was, if possible, even more true after Isabel left him, though he would not have been so extreme as to have put it that way. He always told people (including his darling Isabel) that his sister had been obliged to move far away from him through circumstances beyond his control. Not that her distance affected the love between them other than to increase it, given the greater opportunities to express themselves to each other via the written word.

Ivo's life was in rigorous order until the day Tim blasted it all away internally. Externally, of course, Ivo continued to keep up appearances and his schedule. For a rather long time, he did not even acknowledge the fact that a cataclysmic event had occurred. (To be compassionate about Ivo's situation, it can be said that he did not realize it himself other than in brief flashes of incandescent knowledge that were then severely repressed.)

It was Tim's outline glimpsed through the open doorway, you see, that undid Ivo, that set him plotting (he would have called it idle thoughts). The afternoon was bright and sunny, and Ivo left all the doors open, chuckling a little to himself as he imagined the grumbling he knew would soon begin to descend from the upper reaches of the house. Well, too bad. It was a fine day, and most likely one of the last for a while as the dullness of winter was fast approaching.

So Ivo opened all the doors and let the clean air and bright light wash through his rooms as he went through his mail. The sound of the door opening and closing upstairs and then the rapid footsteps made little impression on him. And why should such commonplace household events affect him? Martin's students were always clattering about the place. At least these two were relatively neat about it.

He might not even have looked up, and he has never been quite sure what prompted this reaction other than a sort of sense that someone was looking at him. It even irritated him a little to drag his attention away from the periodical he was leafing through and stare down the hall through the open door. He supposed later that he must have been scowling dreadfully (Isabel always said that was his default expression).

But Tim wasn't scowling (not that Ivo knew the name of the young man passing by his doorway and peering uncertainly into the flat).

_Oh._

There was that feeling, that horrible wonderful feeling you get that is a combination of dread and excitement and longing and surprise and (most of all) desire all rolled up into one nauseating whole. How long had it been since Ivo had felt it, and not just in a brief tremor but in a shudder that ran from the balls of his feet up through his spine to the sensitive tips of his long fingers? The hairs on the back of his neck rose and he shivered, though not from the cold air he was letting inside.

The young man who stood poised before him was, to put it plainly, beautiful, very beautiful, so beautiful in fact that it more than took Ivo's breath away. It was like a swift punch in the stomach when you've no idea a fist is coming at you. Later, when the young man was gone and Ivo shut the door on the afternoon light, he told himself that it was a matter of the light having a special effect on face and hair, that surely no one was that beautiful without at least a little extra help.

But that was later, and for more than a few minutes after the young man (Ivo smiled ruefully as he thought "fawn" to himself) left, Ivo stood holding the magazine in nerveless hands and remembered the face. It wasn't that he correctly recalled the individual qualities of the face—whether the nose was long and straight or turned up at the tip, what colour the eyes were, whether the mouth was generous, oh yes, the mouth was generous and lush, he could tell that much even at such a quick look. He just knew that he must see that face again and, even more, discern what (if anything) lay behind the sunlight-limned features.

_No. Just look. No more than that._

Ivo went upstairs and knocked on Martin's door.

"Do they have to make such a noise, clattering about and shouting?" Ivo asked without a word of greeting when Martin opened the door. "And how many more weeks of it shall I have to put up with for now?"

After he went back downstairs, pretending to be completely unsatisfied with Martin's sarcastic though detailed response, Ivo took out his appointment book and thumbed through its pages. With small, precise marks, he inked in the known hours from the present until the Christmas break when he could expect Martin's clattering young man to appear. But then, Ivo was always a very careful man.


End file.
